Garda Reform
Dail Éireann — 2020-09-10
============================================================

Paul Murphy (PBP), Dublin South-West

If the Government gets away with this, in future whistleblowers or perceived whistleblowers may be discriminated against in terms of promotion by a Garda Commissioner. The power was taken out of the hands of the Garda Commissioner and given to the Policing Authority for a very good reason. We all saw the disgraceful treatment of Maurice McCabe and others. It is an astounding counter-reform to recentralise power in the hands of the Garda Commissioner given the chilling effect that can have within the ranks. How much discussion was this subject to within the Government? Is the Green Party on board with the plan to give the power back to the Garda Commissioner to allow discrimination in that sense against whistleblowers in the force? This is an explosive and outrageous decision by the Government and should be the subject of a significant public debate. Rather than just implementing recommendations, the Government is recentralising powers in the hands of the Garda Commissioner which will have very negative effects for whistleblowers in the future.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2020-09-10/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:48:33+00:00
Sitting date: 2020-09-10